Continuing with a second posting to the ALS group and preparation for some of the learning activities

Preparation - Therapeutic Use of Dramatic Role Playing - Online Tutorial 1 - 19^th May 2010

Hi all

I am delighted to see you all have now set your Personal Learning Journals, and I am sure the one remaining will have it up before the weekend. Not all of you are been shown up as following each others blog.

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Remember having your Personal Learning Journal means keeping a regular entry of your reflections, try not to procrastinate, challenge any inner voices you may be harbouring; somehow  imagining you are going to accumulate enough material to display how ‘excellent’ your are in your ‘student/learner’ role  before you enter the perfect entry. The learning is in the ‘process’ not ‘product’ ….learn to give up unnecessary anxieties and stress yourself out. I know, been there already J,  after all, we are learning to invoke and evoke our inner creativity and spontaneity, so learn to capture the inner thoughts of the moment without too
many self censorship in giving birth to your inner expressions , that’s the only you are going to get to know your ‘Self’ …. well…...at least you know that this will be contained within the safety of this ‘playing and learning space’ as you engage with the materials. This process is no different than what you hope to achieve with your clients as you consider the creation a similar ‘therapeutic space’ where they can feel safe with their own creativity and spontaneity.

Preparing for the online tutorial

The rules of giving apologies to your group applies if for whatever reason you are not able to attend, maybe when you all meet as an ALS group as in my earlier suggestion to go through the ground rules again.

Task One

Have your role play character ready– see attachment for the Profiling of the Fantasy Character. I have given a suggested template and an example of how I’d developed my own fantasy character – Shape Shifter. A copy of an blank template has been send via attachment.

Guideline in using the template

To help yourself, use the technique of‘role interviewing’. A useful process is creating a visual representation of the character first. This can be easily achieved by gong to the various links which have application for you to play with as you create a character  DON’T worry too much about the background details for the character, just be intuitive and go with your ‘gut’ feelings and let yourself be drawn by what you have put together. Next, like any piece of art that is created, not only look at it but ‘into’ and ‘through’ it. Let the details of the image tell you its story, the eyes, its clothing, its gestures, let the image suggest what it is attempting to tell you, to communicate to you, there is a story waiting to be told. Really open yourself to it and contemplate and reflect on your impressions. This will really help you to connect to your own creation more meaningfully as the uniqueness of your creation comes from a place that is deep within you. Don’t dismiss what may initially seem alien, strange thoughts, images and impressions that may spontaneously pops into your head, go with it. Take some risk with your imagination, go outside normal convention,  outside your narcisstic, comfort zone, play a character of someone that is ‘not you’, experiment beyond  the sweet young cute, pretty, handsome, prince charming, socially acceptable, run of the mill ‘nice’ one-dimensional  fantasy type of character. This could be an opportunity to explore your rejected, disassociated, projected, ‘split off’, shadow part of you in a relatively safe environment. As you put yourself in unexpected role playing situation, you learn to improvised and you can therefore you  appreciate why ‘improvisation’ is greatly valued in role playing as it is the germ/virus for spontaneity and creativity…..its fun too as you learn to trust in ‘letting go’ your ‘normal’ constraints on your ways of behaving and thinking and experiencing….after all its only pretending, playing only lah, not real, not me…just being the character !. This is the advantage of improvised role playing as it let you discover alternative outcomes and ways of being from which insights can then be integrated into your everyday reality..……or maybe what I am suggesting could be a leap too far for the group at moment, if that is the case, ignore all of the above as just my inconsequential rantings when I get carried away every now and again.

Role Interviewing is a technique for fleshing out your basic character and giving it breadth and depth. You can make your character as simple or complicated as you want you character to be. Firstly distance yourself or dis-identify yourself from the created character and take on another role maybe as an investigative journalis, or TV interviewer and interrogate or interview the character, write down the interview questions that are more likely to reveal the fullness of the character. This can be in the context of time…… past, present, future……motivation and intentions…….. social-c ultural  context……….strengths and weaknesses ………hopes and dreams  etc etc Then answer your own questions in character and this will provide substance to your character and make the ‘suspension of disbelief’ easier  as you enter the imaginary realm. The development of the ‘interviewing technique’ will sharpen your skills in bringing out your clients role play character.  We will be doing some practice with each other during the tutorial. We will be engaging in synchronous or real time interaction in role for part of the tutorial session. Give some thought to how you prepare your ‘ritual’ to get into your character (role-taking) for role playing. Remember my earlier email to you with an example of how I use an everyday object like a marble to mark my transition into virtual space as I proceed from everyday reality into dramatic reality. It also helps with the role-taking process as I begin to inhabit the role and such a ritual will also help me to de-role myself when I finish and
engaged with my everyday reality.

The Drpworld forum I have set up is to be used as a virtual space only to be entered in role as your character and not as ‘you’ so keep the boundary between Drpworld and your everyday world. Writing will be in first-person,  present-tense, whether in dialogue or monologue. When you enter, your Keep the space ‘sacred’ ……. Just like you maintain and respect the boundaries of your therapeutic space where you do your therapy with your clients. This is not a forum to ask for clarification, discussion about the role playing task at hand, reflect and analyse on the process etc . as a student of this module. This happens in the main learning portal for this module at Module Blogspot and within your Personal Learning Journal or Emails to me or your ALS. Drpworld allows the development of the extended role playing asynchronously whilst the Chat room provide for synchronous role playing.

Task Two

Could you also prepare very brief vignettes of work with individual children (we will start with one to one work with children before we progress into group later) you may be working with, from previous or current cases where you may consider how best to move into role playing to achieve your therapeutic intention or the your role playing efforts had come across some hiccups in your attempt. (Maintain the
confidentiality, annonimised all personal references) The main teaching point here is primarily to explore the skills that could be applied or be implemented generally with children. Supervision later will look into the unique dynamic of the individual case presented in relation to your work in using therapeutic role playing. I was thinking about the problem scenario for the ALS and may be incorporate a Case Study. We will discuss this further in tutorial.

A task for your Personal Learning Journal

Apart from your reflections and evaluations of the skills workshop, your questions, goals and aims for doing
this module, in you PLJ, you are also given a prescription to another small task. I will be posting the relevant books in anticipation that you will be referring to it. The only requirement is that you provide a Chapter Review in your Personal Learning Journal which you will have selected from the book “Clinical applications of drama therapy in child and adolescent treatment / edited by Anna Marie Weber, Craig Haen.

The review will contain your very brief summary of the chapter (e.g. say in no more than 50 words what’s its about) your reflections on it (e.g. what were the ‘good’ bits and how has it contributed to your thinking about therapeutic role playing) That’s all for now. This email will be uploaded onto the Module Learning Portal as well and I am thinking to put on AlexCPPD.Blogspot.Com as well to give those who have attended the skills workshop a flavour of what happens in the Second Half of the module with the Action Learning Set.

Best Wishes

Alex